Laurence looked at the gems in front of him. There were ten that he could use as enchantments, but only one he could make a weapon out of. A large sheet of Salamandrite had smashed in front of him while he was exploring the cavern and the stones he had salvaged from the accident were paltry. If he could have used the entire sheet he could have made something incredible, but instead he would have to make a knife.
After thinking about what he wanted the knife to do he set it down in front of him and began to change the shape of the gem shard. He ran mana through his fingers and projected a knife-edge out of them, then proceeded to whittle the shard into the shape of a needle blade. Once he felt the blade itself was complete he constructed a solid hilt, but left a small centimetre long hole in the middle and at the base.
The vessel was finished but Laurence was not done with the knife. He began channelling copious amounts of mana into the blade. On the outside the knife looked no different, but in his mind’s eye Laurence could see the molecular makeup of the knife. Laurence began colouring the molecules black and white, forming the runes needed to imprint his will upon the knife. It began shaking in his palms, the tool vibrating with excess energy. It was the first time that the boy had tried to make a weapon this way, and it took far more concentration and fine control than he was used to. He had nearly lost control of the flow of mana five times already, which would have made the tool explode and render his work useless. Sweat dripped down his forehead, rolling onto his nose as he focussed. He wanted to get this right the first time, but it was unbelievably hard. It was the combination of everything he had learned up to this point and the key to him improving.
As he focussed a thin band of black began appearing down the centre of the blade. The blade began vibrating even harder as the band reached the three holes in the hilt of the dagger. It split and wrapped round each hole before reconnecting and moving further down the weapon. The vibrations became so hard that it almost jumped out of Laurence’s hands. The band was growing quickly, but it was painfully slow to Laurence. Everything had seemed to slow down as he cut out all outside stimuli. There was only the boy and the dagger, the runes and the target. He could feel that the blade was almost complete, but the whole process was draining his mana far quicker than he thought possible. Most things he had done with mana took barely any from his reservoir, but trueforming drained it in mere minutes.
Laurence had reached the last stretch but there was very little mana left in his system. He reached the tip of the blade and began pulling the dregs of mana in his system out to finish the job. He began shaking and his vision blurred but he was not going to give up. As the last rune came down he swooned and collapsed. He was not unconscious, but he could not move, and could barely think. Eventually his mana reservoir began drawing in mana from the outside world, and Laurence was able to regain some semblance of control over his body again. He felt Yun licking his face and heard him whimper the thought Brother, why do you do this?
Laurence began circulating his mana to the inner flame formation once again and power flooded back into him. When he could finally move again he said “It’s so I get better at my skill. Father always taught me that a person should only do something if they intend to be excellent at it. I intend to be the best at understanding this book, no matter what”.
Once Laurence had recuperated he took a look at the knife. It was complete, and the moment someone injected mana into it, the weapon would belch flame out of its tip and elongate its range instantly. It allowed for a smoother control of the elements in these gems that Laurence could find everywhere, and Laurence’s plan with the knife was to make it a very special weapon. He took three more gemstones and whittled them down into two pins and a marble. The first pin was a piece of Tornado Diamond, which Laurence quickly injected his mana into and turned into a key piece for the knife. He then took a nereid aquamarine pin and turned it into the second key piece. The final gem, the marble, was a stone of treantite. This piece was special, and would be where Laurence tried his first enchantment. To enchant was to inject the nature of a book into a weapon. In a person who had skill with the book it would either allow them to use the book at a slightly higher tier of skill or it would allow them to use the special ability of the book at a reduced mana cost. In a person who did not know the book it would allow them to use the special ability at a base level.
Laurence took the gem and placed it against his book of creation then began forcing his mana through the gem, into the book and then back into his body, circulating the inner flame formation at the same time. Supposedly the stronger you were, the quicker you could enchant an element, but it only took Laurence ten cycles of the inner flame formation to finish the gem. Floating inside the marble lay a small hammer, of the same ilk as the one on Laurence’s red book. With this ready Laurence knew that everything was prepared. He took one of the strips of the Orik left over from the skin that he had cured, and began wrapping the leather around the hilt of the knife. Once he had reached the end of the leather strip and made sure that the leather itself was all secure, he formed three holes in the leather and stuck the pins inside. Finally Laurence inserted the marble into the hilt and smiled as the weapon in front of him was completed.
He looked at the completed knife and smiled, rather proud of himself. Is it done? Said Yun.
“It is little brother,” Laurence replied. “I think we should finally get moving now. I took an entire day to prepare this knife, the worst part is I am not even going to use it”.
Why? Why make it? Yun was confused.
“Simple. To make myself better at my craft. If I want to become the best creation immortal I have to practice and apply my knowledge. Unapplied knowledge is wasted knowledge, and I don’t want to waste the book”. He put the knife on the floor in the middle of the cavern. “I’m sorry knife, I leave you here in the hope that someone finds you and names you. You’re going to find a good home someday”. He stood up and looked at his brother. “Shall we have a look at the rest of this cavern then, Yun?”
“Yes!” The wolf barked.
The caverns stretched on for miles, each flickering with colour from the gem veins that flowed through them like blood. There were openings in the maze of tunnels that contained settlements of numerous variety, each with a different group of people and role in the world. The most numerous was the Tuinia race. They were a species that had evolved surviving off the energy in the rocks. Their physical needs were few, but they had found that sometimes people would come through the tunnels with strange trinkets. If not given a trinket then the Tuinia would quickly become aggressive and violent. That was their way, and was how Laurence found them a few days after moving on from the knife.
Standing in the tunnel, barring Laurence’s way stood two men. They were both short of stature but were wide set, and had an eerie pale glow to their skin. This glow had come from the Salamandrite deposits that could be found in most of the caves, and was just one more oddity in these odd caverns that stretched for eternity. The two young men looked at Laurence and Yun, then said “Prize” with a grunt. The boy looked at his friend and then back at the Tuinia in front of him. He had confusion plastered all over his face.
“I don’t know what you mean”. He replied.
“Prize,” they said again, this time more aggressively. There was no way for Laurence to know that the prize the Tuinia were asking for would be anything he could give them. However just asking for a prize was a bit much for Laurence to take. He had been taught by his father that people get what they deserve, and if someone wanted a present they should deserve it.
“Prize!” The men growled. They were getting angry now, to them it was important that they get something to pass their rite of passage and Laurence was not being cooperative. The excess aggression caused by the Tuinia began to agitate Yun, and he growled back. Now almost a meter tall, the young wolf was an imposing mass of fur and muscle. He pulled his jaw into a rictus grin and let out a throaty rumble at the idea of fighting. The Tuinia both shrunk back at the growl, showing a large amount of fear and no small amount of outrage. They pulled two blades each out of the sides of their bodies and took a battle stance. “Prize or fight!” They said with finality.
“Oh! You want a toll!” Exclaimed Laurence. He quickly pulled out his bag and rifled through it, finally ending on two carved treantite curios that he had made. Neither of them had any power, but they were beautiful statues of plants that he had made to practice fine control of trueforming. He handed them the statues and the Tuinia looked at him, then the statues and then back at him, with confusion on their faces. They were not really prepared for the eventuality that someone might simply not understand them, rather than be unwilling to part with their ‘prize’.
“Toll?” Said the one on the left, pointing at the statue of a sapling tree. “Prize” he said more definitely.
“Toll or Prize,” said Laurence, pointing at the sapling as well. The two Tuinia began getting excited and grabbed at the boy. They pointed towards the tunnel they were standing in front of and began pulling Laurence that way.
“Camp!” They said, then began conversing with each other in an odd clicking sound. The two pulled the boy and his dog towards what appeared to be their home. What was presented was a village of sorts, built into one of the larger cavernous areas. It was a colourful place, filled with patterned gemstones and odd bric-a-brac that gave the entire settlement a lively, and almost festive feel. Small Tuinian children ran about everywhere, playing some obscure game where the end goal seemed to be giggling on the floor in a heap. To Laurence, the place was idyllic.
At the centre of the cavern stood a giant multicoloured vein that looked like a tree. It spread over the entire village and they seemed to worship it like a deity. Around its roots were scattered thousands of objects and skulls. Each object under the tree had at least one skull next to it, while some had two. There was obviously some significance to the objects with the skulls, but it escaped Laurence. The gem tree was nothing less than beautiful. The more Laurence looked at it, the more he wanted to make a miniature version to carry with him. He looked up and followed the tornado diamond trunk to its branches and saw the leaves were a fifth gemstone that he had not come across before. It piqued Laurence’s interest, so he began planning a way to climb the tree.
“You come Chief!” Said the tree-statue Tuinian. He pointed at the gaudiest home in the cavern and led the boy there. Yun would have gone with him but he was set upon by children before he got the chance, and by rubbing his belly they managed to distract him entirely.
The inside of the chief’s home was much the same as the outside. It was gaudy, bright, and most of the objects within were an eclectic mess. There was no rhyme or reason to the objects in the room, but they obviously had value to the chief.
Laurence sat on a chair opposite the old Tuinian male that he assumed was the chief of the tribe. The old man looked up and smiled, his entire face creasing even more than it already did.
“So. You the traveller this time”. His voice was even rougher than the young Tuinian who guided Laurence up to this point, but he seemed to have a more stable grasp on the common tongue. “I called Windread chief of Tuinians, Challenger, who you?”
“I’m Laurence. I’m just passing through to get to the next stele. I have to ask, that gem vein in the middle, the one that looks like a tree, what are the leaves made of?”
“The holy tree not your worry. You want to go to fate door? If you give prize then will give you guide. Deal?”
Laurence thought about the effort required to make another statue, and the time a guide would save, then quickly decided the effort was worth it. He pulled out a shard of nereid aquamarine and began shaping it with his hands. He was trueforming, but to the leader of this tribe he seemed to be someone sort of wizard. Every pass of Laurence’s hands over the stone changed its shape. It started as a relatively pointed shard and slowly came alive in the boy’s hand. Each pass was quicker than the last, and each pass added deeper and greater details, until finally after what felt like an hour to the boy there stood a small statue of a giant fish jumping. It was one of the fish that Laurence had observed on the primeval floor, and had etched into his mind as being particularly magnificent.
“Is this good enough?” He said, presenting the statue.
The chief of these Tuinians looked at the young boy as if he was either some sort of demon or godlike being, and then just said “Yes”. He took out a rolled up scroll and presented it to the boy. “This be your guide. You follow red path and it take you to fate door”.
Laurence accepted the map, and then stood up. “If it is okay, I will rest up here tonight and then be on my way tomorrow”. The chief assented with a nod and then he left.
When Laurence got outside he was confronted with a slew of festivities. There were green stones everywhere and the Tuinians seemed to be getting drunk off the energy in them. They were celebrating, and the source of the celebration seemed to be the two young Tuinian men that Laurence had come in with. Seeing how the town was reacting, Laurence looked up at the tree again and began thinking.
“Perhaps it was a good idea for me to stay today after all”. He said to no one in particular.
The day rolled on, and the festivities began to slow down. Tuinians left and right were falling asleep in any place they considered comfortable. Finally the only ones left standing were Laurence and Yun. It was rare that someone would come back with a prize unharmed, so when they did the Tuinians would party until they could no longer stand. Even the children would join in.
The entire situation was fascinating to Laurence, so for most of the night he had taken masses of notes in his codex about the civilisation he was in. He drew the area, and the tree in the center, then described his surroundings and what he assumed they meant. By the time the festival had ended he was finished. The codex had been fully updated to where he was and had been fleshed out with a variety of images.
Drawing was Laurence’s favorite part of updating his codex. He was obsessed with making the images look as accurate as possible, so he took a great deal of time in making sure he was happy with them. When the image was done only then would he write around it, keeping things neat and clear. In his near fifty days of travel he had worked on around fifteen pages a day, and was quickly approaching his thousandth entry. More than anything, the Absolution Codex was Laurence’s favourite creation. It allowed him to record everything he came across, and often worked as a journal, discussing his thoughts and plans in great detail.
He put the book back in his bag, and looked at the surroundings. It was time to find out what that fifth stone was. Laurence knew he would get in trouble if he was caught, so he waited until people would be asleep to find out. Fortunately due to the festival the Tuinians had festivities until they passed out. The coast was clear, so Laurence and Yun quickly ran towards the giant tree in the center of the cavern. They reached the base of the tree and looked up. It was sparse with branches for around one hundred meters, but then the heart of the tree branched out and was covered with beautiful black stones. They were leaves to the myriad elemental stones that ran as the tree’s trunk, veins, roots and branches.
Laurence looked up at the nearest branch. It was over fifty meters up in the air, but if Laurence wanted to get to the canopy he would have to reach that branch. He pushed the mana from his reservoir into the muscles and bones in his legs, then sprung into the air. The boy soared into the sky and reached just below the branch, unfortunately it was not enough. He began falling and soon hit the ground with a loud crash, nearly colliding into the area filled with skulls. The ground cracked beneath his feet and he lost sensation in his legs as his body was jarred beyond what it would normally take. Laurence pulled his feet out of the ground and rubbed them to get some sensation back, then finally began channeling even more mana into his legs, with greater intensity than before. The insides of his legs felt like they were brimming with flaming energy, ready to burst out at any time. He bent his knees and pushed, soaring into the air. He flew towards the the branch and sped straight past it, going even further into the tree. Eventually he landed on the trunk of the tree itself, almost twenty meters over his original target. The view was not the best he had seen in his travels so far, but it was without a doubt the most unique.
Brother. Safe? Laurence heard Yun project into his head. The wolf was getting smarter and larger with each passing day. Soon not only would the beast be the size of a bear, he would also be at least as smart as Laurence.
I’m safe Laurence sent back. It had taken him most of the time he was traveling with Yun, but he had begun to understand the core concepts behind the process. It turned out that this process was done by activating the tattoo on Laurence’s arm. If he fed it mana then it would allow him to pass on a message to Yun if he was nearby. The more he wanted to say, the more mana it would require, and the more mana he put in as excess, the further it could travel. Laurence had learned early on that if he did not pay attention then he would easily empty his mana reservoir into a stream-of-consciousness message with no target.
Laurence grabbed hold of the trunk the moment he hit it, and began climbing up with his grip alone. Every-so-often he would accidentally drive his hands into the trunk itself, and would release a few shards of the tree onto the unsuspecting ground below, but eventually he reached the next major branch in the tree. Swinging onto the branch, Laurence edged along the branch until he reached the first black stone. Upon closer inspection, the black stone was a gemstone was made up of three extremely dark gems. One black, one purple and one brown. Laurence moved his hands over two leaves and began changing the shape of the leaf, so it was simply no longer connected to the branch anymore.
Before even assessing them Laurence moved both leaves into his bag, and made his way down the hill. It was a long way down, further than Laurence felt comfortable jumping down, so he jumped to the trunk and slid down it. Near the bottom of the tree Laurence pushed away and landed more successfully than his first attempt, rolling and not leaving any impact on the ground. His job was done, and now it was time for him and Yun to leave.
He pulled out the leaf and began looking it over as he moved towards the exit. It was a beautiful stone, within which contained a form of energy that felt incredibly familiar to Laurence. He looked at it closely as he strode out of the cavern with his friend only turning back to look at the village one more time. Unfortunately as he did he saw the chief of the settlement who noticed the gem in Laurence’s hands. The Tuinian let out a roar which sounded similar to a cave collapsing. It rose his tribe and they all began staring at Laurence malevolently.
“You take from tree, we take life,” yelled Windread.
Without a moment’s thought Laurence began sprinting from the wave of rock-men that were behind him.
Laurence spent a lot of his time running from things. Often it was not his fault, and someone had just decided to take offence at his existence, but today he accepted that he probably deserved this. He whooped at the adrenaline running through him as he rushed on towards his goal. At a normal pace he would take another forty-five days to get to the gate, but at the speed he was moving it would only take three and a half days while resting often to recover from the fatigue.
Yun was happily keeping pace with Laurence. He was as exhilarated as his companion. A wolf would spend most of its life hunting and stalking its prey, so the amount of time that Yun spent running from things with Laurence was a novelty to his hereditary memories.
They were still being chased by the Tuinians over a day and almost five-hundred miles since they ran from the cavern. Laurence was unsure whether giving the leaf back would actually stop them at this point. Windread had been quite adamant about how they would be killed for their transgressions, but Laurence still was not really sure why the Tuinians had been so protective of the tree. He assumed it was something to do with religion, but when he learned how it would sometimes make people do crazy things for no reason he lost interest. Despite his father being a priest, he did not have the most favourable view of the religious, and it was not something that the man dissuaded in Laurence. In the end, his curiosity over the tree much outweighed his curiosity towards the society, and so his predicament occurred.
Laurence was impressed by their perseverance, but irritated by the fact that they would not give up. While they could not travel as fast as Laurence, they did not seem to need sleep, so he lost massive amounts of ground every time he rested and restored his mana.
“What should we do about the Tuinians, Yun?” He said during the second night. He had been trying to think of a new option to sort out them following him, but nothing he could think of would stop them. He felt that they would follow him right up to the stele to the next floor.
Brother? Make new tree? Replied Yun.
Laurence thought Yun was joking, but then he remembered the awe that Windread and the two other Tuinians had shown when he presented them with the statues. The more he thought about it, the better an idea it seemed. “That’s brilliant, brother!” He replied. “It’s so simple, I don’t know why it wasn’t the first thing I thought of”.
Because brother was busy. Yun paused. They are coming. Yun could smell them coming from miles away, which was useful to the two friends, but it had on occasion backfired when they were upwind of a large tornado diamond vein. The diamond veins were the only thing providing air to the caverns. It seemed like the entire plane was underground, with the ebbs and flows of the day being dictated by the intensity of energy in the Salamandrite veins.
Laurence began packing up the campsite they had made to rest in, and stored it all in his bag. He had no reason to be meticulous with his clearing of the camp. For the first ten hours they had tried to scrub clean their tracks, but no matter what they were still followed. It was like the Tuinians knew exactly what path they had to follow to keep up with Laurence. They had some way to follow the boy, but how he knew not. Within a minute the only thing left of the camp was the shards of Salamandrite that made up the campfire residue.
They kept running. Each time they stopped Laurence would pull out the leaf and some other large shards of gems, shifting them into a new form. He did not need the entirety of the leaf to make his sculpture, so he broke up the leaf into its three compound materials then used half the resources of each one he had to begin trueforming. Each time he sat down to rest he would spend less than a minute shifting the materials into a new shape, the rest of the time he would spend using the Inner Flame Formation to restore his mana to its fullest and his body to its peak. It seemed like his hammer gained a greater luster with each use of the formation, and Laurence’s control of his mana seemed to be improving at the same time.
The second day came and went, and Laurence was halfway through his creation by the end of it. He had discovered it was actually quite hard to create something without his full focus being placed upon it. Through a lot of stress, he continued running and forming, then resting and running again until he finally reached the black stele that signified his exit from this plane. He realised he had done something bad, but this was the only way he could think of to rectify his misdemeanour. He was just doing the last touch ups on the statue when the Tuinians began pouring into the room like a flood.
With his back to the door Laurence still seemed fearless, despite being quickly surrounded by hundreds of angry clansmen. He smiled at the building crowd. Soon one would break, and attack him. He could feel it in their aggression. They were waiting for something, presumably their leader, but the man had not yet arrived. Laurence decided to talk to the crowd while he waited and formed the last few details on the statue.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have committed a great crime against you. Please forgive me”.
In response to Laurence talking there was a murmur that sounded like someone walking up a gravel path. He could not tell if it was a positive or negative murmur, but the crowd seemed to be riled up more by his words than before. Perhaps it was because of the crowd mentality, perhaps because of the way he had spoken to them, or perhaps even because they did not fully understand what he said. Only Windread had shown any real grasp of understanding when it came to the common tongue so Laurence assumed that his words were falling on deaf ears.
“In reparation for touching your great tree, I have spent time and effort constructing a small memento that I think you will appreciate”. He continued. The statue in his hand was glowing brightly, it was nearly complete but Laurence needed a little bit more time to complete it. He decided that talking would slow them down enough so that he would have his chance. He bet wrong.
One of the Tuinians decided to take offence at what the boy was saying and ran at him, taking a swing with the large pick that he had been carrying. Laurence shifted to the side, still smiling but sweating a little. Soon a second Tuinian moved in on the action. He had a spear, and began thrusting it at the boy. These two kept swinging their weapons, hoping to connect and claim revenge for Laurence desecrating the tree, but each swing Laurence moved out of the way of. It became like a dance, with the boy dodging at the last moment. Eventually their screams of rage at the futility of their current actions summoned their leader.
Laurence looked Windread in the eyes and said “A gift for you all”. Then he placed the statue on the ground. He bowed and walked through the doorway behind him, leaving the Tuinians to stare at the beautiful miniature statue of their sacred tree. Windread walked over to the statue and carefully picked it up. He held the statue high in the air and let out a roaring rumble of joy. Today would be a fortuitous day to the Tuinian people of the gem tree.
